Two anonymous customers at a Lincoln, Neb. Cracker Barrel gave their waitress a whopping $6,000 tip for happily sharing her life story despite its difficulties, the Lincoln Journal Star reports.
The customers asked their hostess to seat them with the restaurant's "grumpiest waiter" for lunch, as they planned to cheer him or her up, but were seated with the "happiest" instead, 18-year-old Abigail Sailors, who recalled to them why she was so happy despite her difficult childhood circumstances.
Sailors explained that when she was just seven-months-old, her parents got into a car accident in Missouri that left her mother physically traumatized from a brain injury, and because her father was deemed unfit, she and her four siblings were "scattered to three foster homes" across the state before being reunited in one home where they endured years of abuse from a foster father who remains in prison to this day.
"All the horror stories you hear about foster care, we lived through it," as as Sailor's older sister, Sydnie Murphy, told the Journal Star.
Afterwards the state split them all up once more, living with their father at one time before he too was arrested for child abuse. It wasn't until nine years ago that Sailors, Sydnie and one of her brothers were taken in by John and Susi Sailors where they finally found peace and a loving home, prompting Sailors to take their last name.
"It's a great home, great people, amazing," Sailors told the newspaper and her customers at Caracker Barrel. "I don't know how I would have turned out if I didn't have them. They shaped the person I am today." She also shared with the two customers her future plans, which are currently on hold as doesn't yet have enough money to pay for her second semester at Trinity Bible College in North Dakota. Nonetheless, she was happy, as she was saving up her tip money to return soon and considering enrolling in online courses.
When the customers finished their meal, they told her that one of them was a graduate of Trinity, and the man opened his checkbook and wrote her a check for $5,000 towards her tuition and another for $1,000 for "whatever she needed," then left her a $100 tip that she and another server split.
"I couldn't believe it. I tried to thank them, and they said, 'thank God,"' said Abigail Sailors.
Click here to see photos of Abigail Sailors, her siblings and the check she received from her customers who chose to remain anonymous.
